Demand-based messaging is a communication service that allows users to exchange message data, such as text, over a network or other communications media, in real time. Probably the most common medium for exchange is the Internet, but as wireless phone networks continue to expand, their popularity for text messaging is also expanding. For example, U.S. Pat. No. 6,301,609 and United States Patent Application Publication No. 2002/0035605 illustrate the move toward an exchange medium that unifies traditional and wireless communications. Instant messaging (IM) is perhaps the most widely known and used embodiment of demand-based messaging. Today, most network and online service providers offer some form of IM service. IM sessions (colloquially referred to as “chats”) are often lengthy, with multiple participants each taking many turns “speaking” in the chat window.
IM users typically use a networked computer and IM client software to exchange messages with one another in conversational style. An IM client provides an interface for users to compose, send, receive, and read text messages. Examples of IM clients that are popular today include IBM's SameTime, MSN Messenger, and Yahoo/AOL Instant Messenger. Web-based interfaces are also gaining popularity, as illustrated in U.S. Pat. No. 6,651,086 issued to Manber et al., which describes how a user can join conversations about topics that are presented as web content.
In a graphical display, an IM client usually includes at least two windows: one window for composing and sending messages, and another window for displaying messages as users take turns sending and receiving them. It is common for one user to have multiple IM chats running simultaneously, usually in separate windows. Chats may include simple information shared by two workers scheduling a meeting, or they may contain complex discussions regarding proprietary information and critical decisions that keep a project moving forward. Chats also may contain a high degree of historical data and proprietary knowledge that is useful not only to the participants, but to other people within the organization that did not participate in the chat.
Chat transcripts frequently reveal that users spend at least some portion of a chat trying to locate specific statements already made in the current chat, or perhaps in a prior chat. Alternatively, IM users may engage simultaneously in a chat and a phone conversation, and the phone conversation may turn to locating and sharing chat information. U.S. Patent Application No. 2004/0037406, for example, discloses a method and system for distributing instant messages to conference call participants. IM users often need to refer back to information that they have sent already in one or more prior messages. Just as often, IM users need to share that information with other users (perhaps in other chats).
Current IM users must scroll through chat windows (which may be hundreds of lines long) or use the IM client's limited search capability to find specific information. Either of these techniques for locating specific information can prove difficult, cumbersome, and time-consuming.
One solution to the problems associated with sharing chat information involves enabling an IM user to mark a specific location within an instant message, share the message mark with another user, and synchronize a chat window with the message mark. U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/875,881 (the '881 application) disclosed a solution involving a message composer program that configured each computer to accept message data, including markers and links, from a user. A marker identified a specific location within message data, and a link referred to a specific marker within a message. A message transport program configured each computer to send message data over the communications media to other computers, and to receive message data sent by other computers over the communication media. A message reader program configured each computer to display message data, including markers and links, as the message transport program receives it. The preferred embodiment of the message reader program further configured each computer to accept a request from a user to synchronize the display with a marker, and to respond to such a request by displaying the marker and surrounding message data.
The '881 application further disclosed an alternative embodiment that integrated message markers and message links with other conventional applications, including without limitation email clients, word processors, spreadsheet programs, file viewers, or web browsers. In such embodiments, the message composer program configured a computer to accept message links from a user and then to insert the links into application data, rather than message data. Thus, when a user activated a message link within the application, the message reader program opened a new graphical user interface (GUI) to the message composer program and synchronized the display window with the corresponding message marker.
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/032,884 disclosed a system and method for automatically segmenting content from an IM transcript, recognizing commands within the segments, and sending instructions associated with the commands to a computer to send the segment to an application. The system comprised the IM messaging programs, a segment finding program, a command finding program, and a command list. Words in the segment were recognized as commands and a computer executed instructions in response to the recognition of the command.
Although solutions have been presented to marking chat segments for distribution and storage, a further need exists for a method by which a user may select information to be posted to other applications, and to configure an application to receive the selected information in appropriately selected locations. In addition, a need exists for one or more graphical user interfaces that will allow a user to perform the foregoing tasks.